Hit-men
Francis King
A Suitable Case for Corruption Norman Lewis (Hamish Hamilton £8.95)
It is odd and disconcerting that Norman Lewis, now in his late seventies, is not better known to the public at large. Even that capacious drag-net Contem- porary Novelists, full of literary minnows, has failed to capture him — though it does contain an entry for Janet Lewis, widow of the American poet Yvor Winter. Curiously, his reputation seems to be higher in the Soviet Union than over here — not, one guesses, because of any strong pro-Soviet slant but because of a slight anti-American one, revealed yet again in this novel.
Lewis is one of those novelists Graham Greene, Olivia Manning and Frank Tuohy at once come to mind — whose best work derives from the experience, by turns fascinated, angry, baffled and sympathetic, of foreign cultures and peoples. His jour- nalism — most notably Naples '44, a work as horrific in its own way as John Horne Burns's novel, The Gallery — has been deepened by a novelist's empathy; and in turn, the quick, sharp perceptions of a jour- nalist have given to his fiction a brilliant surface glitter.
In writing A Suitable Case for Corrup- tion, he has used, as so often in his novels, both fact and rumour for his foundation. The fact is the assassination of Anwar Sadat ('Pharaoh'), in circumstances that suggested, so lax was the security, that either he believed his life to be charmed or else he was, in some mysterious, mystical way, ready and even eager for so atrocious a martyrdom. The rumour is of attempts, financed and perhaps even organised by the CIA, to murder Gaddafi, Sadat's im- placable rival for Arab leadership.
Lewis's 'suitable case for corruption' is one of those Middle East journalists who, either wittingly or unwittingly, are used by rival intelligence organisations. That Kemp, the journalist in question, should strike me as a composite of two journalists, one now dead and both well known to me, is an in- dication of how lifelike a creation he is. His wife and children absent in England, this intelligent, ingenuous man has been so suc- cessful in ingratiating himself with the Lib- yans that he has become both their unof- ficial adviser and the repository of their confidences. As such, he is a natural target for the Egyptians and the CIA when they decide to make yet another attempt on the life of 'the Gadfly'.
The assassination squad, led by a Turk (an incisive portrait) in whom Sadat has ab- solute trust, is to land on a Libyan beach. But clearly, if it is to do so, then it must be sure that the beach is not guarded or mined. Kemp has written in one of his recent ar- ticles of a Libyan proposal to develop a beach resort for foreigners. If he can be persuaded to discover from his Libyan friends where this resort is to be located, then, cleared of mines, it would be perfect for the landing. Kemp's boss, who is in with the CIA, tells him to go over to Malta where a 'friend' would like to discuss the resort project with him.
Kemp goes to Malta to meet the CIA agent, Jimson. But though Jimson offers him a large sum of money, he decides, since he is basically honest and decent, that he does not want to cooperate. On his return to Libya, however, a series of extremely dis- quieting events befall him. Violently ill from what he is told is food-poisoning, he is rushed to a selected hospital, where, seem- ingly by accident, he meets an attractive hospital nurse. The nurse, suddenly suspended from duty because of the theft of some drugs, asks him for asylum and even- tually takes up residence in the large house in which he lives alone. What Kemp does not at first realise is that none of these events has befallen him by chance. They have been contrived by the Libyans in order to trap him into breaking the Islamic law relating to adultery and so to blackmail him into giving false information to the Egypt- ians and the CIA. The first plot fails; but a second, to entrap him into breaking the Islamic law about the consumption of alcohol succeeds. With its success, the failure of the assassination attempt is cer- tain.
It is improbable that, having realised that one attempt to entrap him had been made, Kemp would then persist in his plan to give an illicit drinks party. Surely, anyone would be extremely careful in such circumstances? But this one flaw apart, the story is wholly convincing. Lewis brilliantly catches the dogmatism and the uncertainty, paradox- ically mixed, of a people who, in a single generation, have made the journey from desert tents to air-conditioned offices. No less brilliantly, he evokes the sad, bored world of the expatriates, earning too much money and with nothing to spend it on, even more distrustful of each other than of the Libyans, and welcoming excitement and even danger merely because the monotony of their lives would otherwise be in- tolerable. The great set-piece of the novel is Kemp's disastrous party, with the guests, high on illicit 'flash', becoming wilder and wilder and less and less predictable in their behaviour.
The intricate plot, with its many-layered ironies, is worthy of Eric Ambler. The ex- ecution, so unobtrusive in its mastery, is often worthy of Graham Greene.
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